Still Jim Part 23

"You must have done some work in the interval," commented Sara.

Jim, leaning against the door post, watched Sara through half closed eyes and glanced now and again at Pen's eager face. Ames puffed at his cigar and gazed out over the desert.

"Work!" he said with a half laugh, "why when I took up that land sand and silence, whisky and poker were the staples round here. I built a one-room adobe, bought a team, imported a plow and a harrow and a sc.r.a.per and went at it. I've got a ten-acre orange grove now and two hundred acres of alfalfa and a foreman who lets me gad! But no one who ain't been a desert farmer can imagine how I worked."

Pen spoke softly. "Were you with him then, Mrs. Ames?"

The little woman looked at Pen with her far-seeing eyes. "Oh, yes, I don't know that Oscar remembers, but we were married in York State. I was a school teacher."

After the little laugh Pen asked, "Do you like the desert farming?"

"I never did get through being homesick," answered Mrs. Ames. "My first two babies died there in that first little adobe. I was all alone with them and the heat and the work."

"Jane, you let me talk," interrupted Oscar briskly. "We both worked. The worst of everything was the uncertainty about water. Us farmers built the dam that laid sixty miles below here. Just where government diversion dam is now. But we never knew when the spring floods came whether we'd have water that year or not. More and more people took up land and tapped the river and the main ca.n.a.l. Gosh! It got fierce. Old friends would accuse each other of stealing each other's water. Then we had a series of dry years. No rain or snow in the mountains. And green things died and shriveled, aborning: The desert was dotted with dead cattle. Three years we watched our crops die and----"

Mrs. Ames suddenly interrupted. There was a dull red in her brown cheeks. "I wanted to go home the third year of the drought. All I had to show for fifteen years in the desert was two dead babies. I wanted to go home."

"And I says to her," said Ames, "I said 'For G.o.d's sake, Jane, where is home if it isn't here? I can't expect you to feel like I do about this ranch for you've stuck to the house. I know every inch of this ranch.

Ain't I fought for every acre of it, cactus and sand storm and water famine? Ain't I sweat blood over every acre? Ain't I given the best years of my life to it? And you say, 'Let's give it up! It ain't home!'

I certainly was surprised at Jane."

"I have worked too," said Jane Ames, gently, to Penelope. "I'd had no help and had cooked for half a dozen men and--and--then the babies!

Having four babies is not play, you know!"

"Oh, I know!" exclaimed Amos impatiently. "You worked. That was why I was so surprised at you wanting to let everything go. But you hadn't made things grow like I had. I suppose that's why you felt different.

That winter the snows was heavy in the mountains and we were tickled at the thought of high water in the spring. We all got out in May to strengthen the dam, hauling brush and stone. But the water rose like the very devil. We divided into night and day shifts, then we worked all the time. But it was no use. The whole darned thing went out like Niagara.

Forty-three hours at a stretch I worked and the dam went out! And the next year the same. Then it was that we began to ask for the Reclamation Service."

Pen drew a long breath and looked from Ames' strong tanned face out at the breathless wonder of the landscape. Far beyond the brooding bronze Elephant lay the chaos of the desert, yellow melting into purple and purple into the faint peaks of the mountains.

"What I can't understand, Ames," said Jim slowly, "after all this, is why you roast the Service so."

Ames flushed. "Because," he shouted, "you are so d.a.m.ned pig-headed! You aren't building the dam for us farmers. You are building it for the glory of your own reputation as an engineer."

There was a moment's silence in the tent house.

CHAPTER XIII

THE END OF IRON SKULL'S ROAD

"The Indians know that the spirit blends with the Greater Spirit, and I myself have seen every atom that was mortal lift again and again to new life, out of the desert's atom drift."

MUSINGS OF THE ELEPHANT.

Jim shrugged his shoulders. Sara's eyes narrowed as he half smiled to himself.

"For instance," Ames went on, "what are you making the third ca.n.a.l so big for? We don't need it that size. You're wasting time and our money.

We've got to pay for the project, us farmers. You don't take any interest in that fact though."

"You don't need a ca.n.a.l that big, but your children will," said Jim.

"I'm building this dam for the future. You farmers never built for anything but the present. That's why your dams went and the water wars were on. But you can't teach a farmer anything."

Jim spoke with a cold contempt that startled Penelope. Ames' kindly eyes were blazing.

"No, but maybe us farmers can teach an engineer something. And I don't know a better talking point for starting an investigation than the way you let the flood rip everything to pieces."

"Which portion of your land is for sale, Mr. Ames?" asked Pen. "My husband has a map of the valley over there."

Jim rose and took up his pony's reins. "I'm sorry anything unpleasant came up, Pen. But you'll find out I'm a fool and a crook some time, so it might as well be now. I must get back." He smiled, lifted his hat and rode off. The four in the tent stared after him.

"He always seems so kind of alone," said Mrs. Ames. "They say his men will do anything for him and yet he always seems kind of lonely. I don't seem to hate him the way the rest of the valley does. He's so young, he don't know how to be patient yet."

"Oh, they don't hate him, do they!" protested Pen.

"You bet!" answered Ames succinctly. Then he added: "You'll have to excuse me saying that. I forgot you was his friend. But this here valley is like my child to me. I'm fighting for her."

"We want to know the truth about him," said Sara. "Are you really trying to get rid of him?"

Ames nodded and picked up the map. "I don't think he's crooked, like some do. I just think he's too young and pig-headed for the job."

"How do you know he's not crooked?" asked Sara.

Pen drew a startled breath. Ames looked at Sara curiously. "I thought you was his friend."

"He's my wife's friend," replied Sara. "You know what the Congressional committee reported about him."

"Sara!" cried Pen. "You know Jim couldn't do a crooked thing to save his life!"

Sara's black eyes blazed dangerously. Mrs. Ames stirred uncomfortably and Pen rose. "Let's leave the men to their land sales and go out where we can get a view of the camp, Mrs. Ames," she said.

The two women walked slowly out to the mountain edge and settled themselves on a rock.

"I'm sorry anything unpleasant occurred," said Pen.

"Don't you let it worry you," replied Mrs. Ames. "I'm used to it. Ever since the dam was started, Oscar has been like an old maid with an adopted baby."

"I'm so sorry Jim has made himself unpopular here," said Pen. "He and I were brought up by my uncle who married Jim's mother. And Jim is fine.

The Lord made Jim and then broke the mold. There's no one like him; no one cleaner and truer----"

Mrs. Ames looked at Pen thoughtfully. Then she patted the girl's hand.

"Don't you worry about him. He's got lots to learn but the Lord don't waste stuff like him. I would be perfectly happy if my boy turned out like him."

Pen smiled a little uncertainly. "We who know him so well are foolish about Jim. Tell me about your children."